UNITY watched the beloved being as only a woman can watch man or a
sailor can watch sea and sky. To each, signs and portents are vital
matters. She noted every shadow on his face, every deepening line, every
trick of his eyes, every mouthful that he ate, and the very working of
his throat as he swallowed. She noted the handwriting on envelopes and
unfinished manuscript, the ashes knocked out of pipes, the amount
of evening whisky consumed, and the morning muddle of pillow and
bedclothes. She was alive to his every footstep in the house. She knew,
without entering the study, whether he was working, or sitting morose in
his old leather arm-chair, or pacing the room. She knew whether he slept
or was restless of nights.
One day she made a discovery, and in consequence took the first
opportunity of private use of the telephone, and rang up Herold. She
was anxious about her guardian. Could she see Herold as soon as possible
without Aunt Gladys or guardian knowing? They arranged a meeting just
inside the park, by the Marble Arch.
Herold, who knew Unity to be a young woman of practical common sense,
had readily assented to her proposal, and in considerable perturbation
of mind started from his home in Kensington. He arrived punctually at
the Marble Arch end of the park, but found her already there, a patient,
undistinguished little figure in her tartan blouse and nondescript hat
adorned with impossible roses. The latter article of attire was her
best hat. She had bought it already trimmed for seven-and-six, which had
seemed a reckless expenditure of her guardian's money.
She was sitting on a bench of the broad carriage-drive, watching with
a London child's interest, despite her preoccupation, the gorgeous
equipages, carriages, and automobiles transporting the loveliest ladies
(save one) in the world, ravishingly raimented, from one strange haunt
of joyousness to another. For it was half-past three of the clock on
a beautiful day in the height of the London season, and, as everybody
knows, Hyde Park is a royal park, and along that stretch of road from
Hyde Park Corner to the marble arch no cart or omnibus or hackney cab or
pretentious taxi is allowed under penalty of instant annihilation.
Only the splendour (in eyes such as Unity's) of plutocratically owned
vehicles meets the enraptured vision. Pedestrian fashion, however, does
not haunt that end of the road, which is mostly given up to nurse-maids
and drab members of the proletariat; but the flowerbeds make
compensation by blazing with colour, and the plane-trees wave their
greenery over everything.
Herold raised his hat, shook hands, and sat down by Unity's side.
“It _was_ good of you to come, Mr. Herold. I scarcely dared ask you,
but--”
“What's gone wrong?” he asked, with a smile.
She began her tale: how her guardian neither ate nor slept, how he tore
up page after page of copy,--he who used to write straight ahead; she
found the pieces in the waste paper basket,--how he was growing gloomy
and haggard and ill. Her woman's mind laid pathetic stress on these
outward and visible signs.
“You must have noticed the difference in him, Mr. Herold,” she said
tearfully.
He nodded. John took trouble badly, which was one of the reasons
that endeared Herold to him. In some aspects he was nothing but a
Pantagruelian infant; but it was no use discoursing on this to Unity.
“He feels things very deeply,” he said instead.
“Would n't you, if you loved Miss Stella, and never saw or heard from
her?”
“I should,” said he, with a smile.
“And she loves him. I know it. And she feels deeply, too.”
He acquiesced. “She, too, is very unhappy.”
“And they 're separated forever because they can't marry?”
“That is so, Unity,” said he.
“Why can't he get rid of her--the other woman I mean?” cried Unity,
fiercely.
“She has given him no grounds for divorce.”
Unity twisted her handkerchief in her hands. “I suppose there comes a
time,” she said, “when people can't stand any more suffering, and they
break down or do something dreadful.”
“Your guardian is too strong for that,” replied Herold.
“I don't know. I don't know.” The mothering instinct spoke. “That 's
what I 've come to ask you about. I'm frightened.”
[Illustration: 0294]
She turned on him a miserable, scared face and told him of her
discovery. She had gone into her guardian's study that morning in order
to tidy up, and had seen that he had left the key in the lock of his
private drawer, with the rest of the bunch hanging from it. She had
opened the drawer and found, lying on top of some documents one of which
was a sealed envelope endorsed “My Will,” a loaded revolver and a case
of cartridges. She knew that the revolver was loaded because she had
examined it. Then, hearing his step, she had shut the drawer, and gone
on with her dusting. He had entered, locked the drawer, put the bunch in
his pocket, and gone out without a word.
Herold looked grave. More in order to gain time for reflection than to
administer a moral lesson, he said:
“You should n't have searched his private drawer, Unity.”
“I'd search anything, if only I could find a way of helping him,” she
replied impetuously. “When I see him suffer and can't do anything for
him, I feel crazy. I can't sleep sometimes, and stand outside his door
in the middle of the night. It does n't matter whether I ought n't to
have done it or not,” she cried with an awkward and impatient gesture;
“I did it, and I found what I found. What I want to know is, Why should
my guardian make his will and keep a loaded revolver in his room unless
he thought that--that he was going to die?”
Her eyes filled with tears. Herold, alarmed by her news and touched by
her devotion, took her cheap-gloved hand and pressed it. Occupants of
the dazzling equipages stared at the elegantly attired gentleman and the
dowdy little girl love-making on the public seat. He tried to reassure
her.
“Every man with folks depending on him makes a will, so we can dismiss
that; and I know heaps of men who keep revolvers.”
“But why should the will be dated two days ago?” asked Unity.
“Was it?”
“The date was written on the envelope, with 'My Will' and his name.”
“In all probability,” said Herold, “the cloud that has come between him
and Stellamaris has made him decide to make a fresh will. I know he made
one some years ago.”
“But why the revolver?”
“He spoke to me, also some years ago, about getting one. There had been
one or two burglaries and an ugly murder--don't you remember?--in the
neighbourhood. He must have got it then.”
“It looks too new,” said Unity.
“Those things keep new for ever so long, if they 're not used,” he
argued.
“Then you think there 's no danger?” she askeds with both her hands on
his wrist.
“Not at present,” he said, with a smile. “Look after him as closely
as you can and keep up your brave little heart, or we 'll have you too
going about with hollow eyes and gaunt cheeks, and we can't afford it.”
“Me?” She sniffed derisively. “I'm as tough as a horse. And what do I
matter?”
“Your guardian would have a pretty poor time of it if he had only Aunt
Gladys to look after him.”
The shadow of a grin flickered over Unity's face.
“I suppose he would,” she said.
She went away half-comforted. She had shared her terrifying secret with
Herold, which was a good and consoling thing; but she had not been
quite convinced by his easy arguments. And Herold went away entirely
unconvinced. He knew John as no one, not even Unity, who had made him
the passionate study of her life, could know him. It was his peculiarity
to pursue his right-headed ideas with far less obstinacy than his
wrong-headed ones. In the former case he had a child's (and sometimes
a naughty child's) hesitations, and was amenable to argument; but when
bent on a course of folly, he charged blindly, and could be stopped
only with great difficulty. Herold walked through the park in anxious
thought, and, at a loose end for an hour or two, took a taxi to the club
to which both he and John belonged. Avoiding the lounge and its cheery
talk, he mounted to the deserted morning-room, and, having ordered tea,
settled down to an evening newspaper, the pages of which he stared at,
but did not read.
Presently, to his surprise, John, who had avoided the club for some
little time, burly and gloomy, entered the room.
“I thought I'd come in for a quiet talk with somebody; but there's that
ass Simmons down-stairs. He makes me sick.”
Simmons was the wit and brilliant raconteur of the club.
“You can have a quiet talk with me, if I'm good enough,” said Herold.
“I 've been wanting to see you. What line are you going to take in the
'Review' on this latest freak of the censor?”
The prohibition of a famous Continental play had aroused the usual storm
in the theatrical and journalistic world. Every one who wrote turned his
back on the harmless and ridiculously situated man, and in cuttlefish
fashion squirted ink at him. But John Risca took no interest in the
question, and stated the fact with unnecessary violence. He, on his
side, had wanted to see Herold. He had taken his advice and written to
Stella and had received no reply. More than a week had passed. The whole
thing was driving him mad.
Herold made a proposal which had been vaguely in his head for some days,
and to which Unity's communication had given definiteness.
“Come away with me on a sea-voyage--a couple of months--South Africa,
anywhere you like. I'm tired out. As for the piece, it's near the end of
the run, and it 'll hurt no one if I go out and let Brooke play my part.
I have n't had a holiday for two years. It would be an act of charity.
You can get away; no man is indispensable, and you can afford it. If you
stay here, you 'll lose your balance and very likely commit some act of
idiotic folly. By our return, time will have done its soothing work, and
the relations between Stella and yourself will have been readjusted.”
Such was the substance of that which for a solid hour he strove to nail
into John's armour-clad mind. His efforts were vain. In the first place,
John was not going to accept such a quixotic sacrifice of professional
interests from any man, even from Herold; secondly, he could n't get
away from London, and did n't want to; thirdly, if he were being driven
mad within a journey of an hour or so from Stellamaris, he would become
a raving maniac if he were separated from her by half the length of the
earth; fourthly, he was in perfect health and perfect command of his
faculties, and the only meaning he could attach to Herold's insinuation
regarding idiotic folly was that he might forget himself so far as to
go down to Southcliff and make a scene with Stellamaris, thereby acting
with insensate cruelty toward her: all of which was ludicrous, and it
was insulting on Herold's part to make such a suggestion.
Herold called him a fool and said that he did not mean that at all.
“Then what did you mean?”
“When a man loses control over himself and lets himself be obsessed by
a fixed idea, his brain 's not right, and he's capable of anything. The
only chance for him is change of scene and interests, and that's why
I've been imploring you to come away with me.”
“And that's why I'm going to do nothing of the kind,” said John, rising
and looking down upon his friend with blood-shot eyes. “I'm pretty
miserable, I own. Lots of men are, and they have to keep their mouths
shut, because they have n't any one before whom they 're not ashamed to
let off steam. I've got you. I've had you all my man's life. I've told
you everything. Somehow I've not been ashamed to tell you things I
would n't dream of breathing to any other man living. There 's a kind of
woman, I believe, whom I might have talked to as I do to you. I've
not met her, so I've got into the habit of coming to you with whatever
worries me; and you 've never failed me. And I've come to you now. But
there are limits beyond which even a friend like you has no right to
go. You've no right to tell me I'm going out of my mind and to warn me
against behaving like the inmate of a lunatic asylum. You've no right. I
resent it. I'm not going to stand it.”
Herold's reply was checked by the creaking of the door and the entrance
of the bent figure of an old member, a county court judge who, on his
way to a writing-table by the window, nodded courteously to the two
younger men and remarked that it was a fine day.
“I suppose most people would call it so,” said John.
“Don't you?”
“I hate it,” cried John. “I wish it would rain. I wish it would rain
like the devil. I would give my ears for a pea-soup fog. Sunshine is too
blightingly ironical in this country.”
The old judge lifted his eyebrows. “The metaphysics of meteorology are
beyond me,” he said, with a smile and a bow, and sat down to write.
John lingered for a second or two by the side of his friend, tracing
the pattern of the Turkey carpet with the toe of his boot; then he swung
round abruptly.
“Excuse me,” said he. “I 've got to look at Baxter's imbecile article in
'The Contemporary.' ”
He went to the table where the current magazines and reviews were tidily
displayed, and Herold, sitting in an arm-chair some distance away, with
his back to the table, pondered over the discussion that had just taken
place. But for the rumble and clatter of London that came through the
open windows, the ceaseless choric ode to all the drama of the vast
city, there was silence in the spacious room, broken only by the
scratching of the old judge's quill pen. Herold resumed his aimless
skimming of the evening newspaper. What further appeal could he make to
John in his contradictory and violent mood?
At last the old judge, having scribbled his note, got up and left the
room. Herold turned and found himself alone. John had gone without drum
or trumpet. In the lounge down-stairs there was no John, and in the hall
the porter told him that Mr. Risca had left the club.
He went home to his actor's six o'clock dinner, and found a letter from
Lady Blount imploring him to come to Southcliff at once. Stella was
getting worse day by day. Sir Oliver and she were in despair, Dr.
Ransome was at his wits' ends. In a woman's frantic helplessness she
adjured him to come and work a miracle. Now, it so happened that on the
early afternoon of the next day he had a very important appointment.
It was a question of his going into nominal management in the autumn.
Suitable pieces, a theatre, and financial backers, obscure but vital
elements in theatrical business, had been found, and it was with these
last that the morrow's all-important interview was to take place. He
turned up the railway time-table, and saw that by leaving London by the
first train in the morning, and probably skipping lunch, he could
spend a couple of hours in Southcliff and get back in time for his
engagement. He telegraphed to Lady Blount, dined, and went to the
theatre. For perhaps the first time in his pleasant life he was
overwhelmed that evening by the sense of the futility of his work, which
every artist, actor, painter, and poet is doomed to feel at times.
The painted faces of his colleagues, the vain canvas of the sets, the
stereotyped words, gestures, inflections, repeated without variation for
more than the two hundredth time, the whole elaborate make-believe of
life that at once is, and is not, the theatre,--all this oppressed him,
filled him with shame and disgust. It had no meaning. It was an idle
show. He had given to inanity a life that might have been devoted to the
pursuit of noble ideals.
Folks are apt to imagine that, when the pains of the actual world get
round about an artist's soul, the supreme moment has arrived for him to
deliver himself in immortal utterances. This is untrue. He does n't so
deliver himself. On the contrary, he cuts up his canvas, smashes his
piano, and kicks his manuscript about the room. What interpretation
of life, however celestially inspired, can have the all-annihilating
poignancy of life itself? Your poet may write an immortal lyric by the
death-bed of his mistress; but it is a proof that he did not care a
brass farthing for the lady: he is expressing the grief that he might
have felt if he had loved her. For the suffering artist, at grips with
the great realities, art is only a trumpery matter. It is only when
he is getting, or has got, better, that he composes his masterpieces
working
... the world to sympathy
With hopes and fears it heeded not.
So Herold, instinctively obeying the common law, as all poor humans
in one way or another have to do, grew heartsick at the vanity of his
calling, and, after a mechanically perfect performance, wondered how an
honest man could live such a life of shameless fraud.
After a night and dawn of rain the sun shone from a blue sky when he
reached the Channel House next morning. Sir Oliver and Lady Blount
received him in the dining-room. They looked very old and careworn.
Like Constable, they had nothing to live for save Stellamaris; and now
Stellamaris, stricken by an obscure but mortal malady, was dying before
their eyes. So, antiphonally, and at first with singularly little
bickering, they told Herold their story of despair. It added little
to his knowledge. The symptoms of which he was already aware had
intensified; that was all. But the two guardians had altered their
opinion as to the cause. Sir Oliver ruefully discarded the theory of
the touch of the sun, and his wife now realized that the state of
Stellamaris was not merely the morbid phase through which most maidens
are supposed to pass. Dr. Ransome, with intuition none too miraculous,
had emitted the theory that she had something on her mind. “But what
could the poor darling innocent child have on her mind?” cried Sir
Oliver.
“What, indeed,” echoed Lady Blount, “unless her mind is affected?”
“Don't be a fool, Julia,” said Sir Oliver.
“I'm not such a fool as you think, Oliver. Stella has n't lived a normal
life, and who knows but what the change of the last year may have done
harm? Dr. Ransome himself said that if we could cure the mind, we could
cure the body, and advised us to take her abroad so that she could be
distracted by fresh scenes.”
“He hinted nothing about insanity. You ought to be ashamed of yourself,”
said Sir Oliver, with querulous asperity.
Then Herold saw that the truth must be told.
“Has it never struck you that John may be the cause of it all?”
Sir Oliver jerked himself round in his chair. “John? What do you mean?”
“Why, I wrote to John at the same time that I did to you,” said Lady
Blount, “begging him to come down in almost the same words; for you
know, dear Walter, I 'm not a clever woman and can't say the same thing
in two different ways. She does n't know I did so, for she's so strange
and won't talk to any one alone, if she can help it. I thought John
and you might succeed in getting something out of her. But John has n't
replied at all. I can't understand it.”
“Does n't that bear out what I say?” asked Herold.
“But John--what do you mean?” Sir Oliver repeated.
“Yes, dear, what do you mean? Of course John has behaved in an
extraordinary way lately. He has n't been to see us for ever so
long. But the dear fellow has explained. He is overwhelmed with
work, especially at week-ends. He writes me charming letters, and he
corresponds regularly with Stella. I don't see--“.
“Oh, for heaven's sake, Julia, let Walter put in a word!” cried
Sir Oliver, rising and throwing his cigarette-end into the bank of
flowering-plants that filled the summer fireplace, a domestic outrage
that always irritated Lady Blount, and even now caused her to wince and
dart an angry glance at the perpetrator. “Go on. Tell us what you mean.”
“Has it never occurred to you that Stella and John may have fallen
in love with each other--with the ghastly barrier of the wife between
them?”
The two old people looked at him wide-eyed and drooping-mouthed. That
Stellamaris, their fragile, impalpable child of mystery, more precious
to them than a child of their own bodies, over whom they might have
quarrelled--that Stellamaris should be a grown woman, capable of a grown
woman's passions, was a proposition bewilderingly preposterous. Sir
Oliver found speech first.
“Stella in love with John? It 's absurd; it's ludicrous. Why, bless
my soul! you might just as well say she was in love with me! It's
nonsense--ridiculous nonsense.”
He walked up and down beside the dining-room table, with arms
outstretched, shaking his thin hands in protest.
Lady Blount, her elbow resting on the table, looked at Walter.
“The barrier of the wife? Who could have told her?”
“John himself.”
“How much?”
“I don't know.”
Sir Oliver brought himself to an abrupt standstill by the side of his
wife.
“He ought n't to have done anything of the kind. Such things are not fit
for her to hear.”
“That's the dreadful mistake we've made all along, my dear Oliver,” said
Herold, sadly; and he disclosed to them probabilities of which they had
not dreamed.
Lady Blount began to cry silently, and her husband laid his hand on her
shoulder. She put up her own and clasped it. They looked very forlorn,
robbed of the darling they loved. The new Stellamaris was alien to their
conservatism. They did not know her. They were lost. Like children they
clasped hands, and their hearts were united at last in common dismay.
Herold turned and looked out of the window. Presently he said:
“She 's in the garden. I 'll go and talk to her, if she will let me.”
“Do, Walter dear. Try to make her speak. It's that awful silence that we
can't bear.”
“She has always been devilish fond of you,” said Sir Oliver.
Herold went out and came upon her, escorted by Constable, in a
path bordered on each side by Canterbury bells and fox-gloves and
sweet-william. She drew herself up as he approached, and looked at him
like some wraith or White Lady caught in the daylight, with no gleam
of welcome in her glance. The old dog, however, pushed by her to greet
Herold, whom he held in vast approbation. Then, aware of being relieved
from duty, he wandered down the path, where he lay down and, like a
kindly elder, suffered the frisky impudence of a stray kitten of the
household.
“I suppose they 've sent for you because they think I am ill,” Stella
began suspiciously.
“You are ill, dearest,” he replied in a quiet voice, “and it's causing
us all very deep grief.”
“I'm not ill,” she retorted. “But every one's worrying me. I wish you
would tell them to leave me alone.”
He took a nerveless, unresponsive hand and put it to his lips.
“Stellamaris, Stella darling, don't you know how we all love you? How we
would give everything, life itself, to make you happy?”
She withdrew her hand. “Don't talk of happiness. It's a delusion.”
“Every living thing can be happy after its kind,” said Herold. “Look at
this great bumble-bee swinging in the campanula.”
“You were n't sent here to talk to me about bumble-bees,” she said with
an air of defiance.
“No. I came to speak to you about John.”
It was a thrust of the scalpel. It hurt him cruelly to deal it, but it
had to be dealt. He closely watched its effect. Her wan face grew even
whiter, and her lips grew white, and she held herself rigid. Her eyes
were hard.
“I forbid you to mention his name to me.”
“I must disobey you. No, my dearest,” said he, gently barring the path,
“you must listen. John is as unhappy and as ill as you yourself. He is
suffering greatly. I don't know what to do with him. He 's going on like
a madman. You must not be unjust.”
“I 'm not unjust. I know the truth at last, and I judge accordingly.”
“You are hard, Stella. Perhaps that's the first unkind word anybody has
ever spoken to you--and I've got to speak it, worse luck! John would
have told you long ago of the unhappy things in his life if he had
thought they could possibly concern you. As soon as he found that they
might do so, he told you frankly.”
“He has told me nothing,” said Stella, icily.
“He wrote to you about his marriage over a week ago.”
“I did n't read the letter. I never read his letters. I don't take them
out of the envelopes. I destroy them.”
Herold stared in amazement. “Then how,” he cried, “do you know what you
call the truth? What do you know?”
“He married a woman who is still alive. I know a great deal more,” she
added, ingenuous still in her cold disdain.
“More?” His brain worked against baffling conjecture. Who could have
told her? Suddenly his eyes caught the shadow of tragedy. He made a
step forward and closed his hands on her arms, and even then he felt
the shock and pain of their fragility. In London, a short time ago, they
were round and delicately full.
“Stellamaris darling, tell me. It is I, Walter, who have loved you all
your life, and to whom you have always told everything. Something none
of us know has happened. What is it?”
She swayed back from him, and half closed her eyes.
“Let me go,” she said faintly. “Such things are not to be spoken of.
They are not to be thought of. They only come in horrible dreams one
can't help.”
He put an arm round her instinctively to save her from falling.
“Who told you? You must speak.”
She wrenched herself free and stood rigid again.
“She told me, his wife herself.”
“His wife!” His head reeled.
“His deserted wife, a woman with green eyes and thin lips. I suppose you
know her. She came down here to tell me.”
“My God!” cried Herold. “My God in heaven!”
And for the first time Stella saw a man in white, shaking anger, showing
his teeth and shaking his fists.
“When was it?”
She told him. He controlled the riot within him and questioned her
further, almost hectoringly, masterfully, and she replied like a woman
compelled to obey, yet flinging her answers defiantly. And he went on
unrelenting, fighting not her, but the devil that had got possession of
her, until she told him all, even the final horror, as far as he could
wring confession from her virgin fierceness; for, in the white-hot
passion of his anger he had challenged her knowledge of evil almost as
directly as the woman had done.
“And you believe her?” he cried. “You, Stellamaris, believe that
murderous thing of infamy, when you 've known John Risca and his love
and his tenderness all your life? You believe it possible--John and
Unity? Good God! It 's monstrous! It 's hellish!”
He planted himself on the path before her, hands on hips, his sensitive
face set, his blue eyes aflame, and looked at her as no man or woman
had ever yet looked at Stellamaris. And she met his look, and her eyes,
despite the battle her proud soul was fighting, lost their hardness, and
new light flashed into them, as though they had changed from agate to
diamond.
“She loves him, body and soul,” she said. “I ought to have recognized it
in London. I did n't know the meaning of things then. I do now.”
“Yes, she does love him; she loves him as I love you,”--and, unrealized
by him, there came into his voice the vibrating notes of passion that
had stirred Stellamaris to the depths at the theatre,--“with every
quivering fibre, heart and spirit, body and soul.” He flung both hands
before his face,--these were words of madness,--and went on hurriedly:
“She loves him as John loves you, as the great souls of the earth can
love, without thought of hope, just because they love.”
She looked at him, and he looked at her, and they stood, as they had
been standing all the time, in the pathway, between the gay borders of
flowers; and the sky was blue overhead, and the noonday sun caressed the
ivy and lichens on the Georgian front of the Channel House, which basked
peacefully on the farther side of the lawn. The kitten had frisked away
with feline inconsequence, and Constable sprawled stiffly asleep on the
gravel, like a dead dog.
“You say you love me like that?” said Stellamaris.
“You command love. Unity herself loves you like that,” replied Herold,
loyally.
“What reason should she have for loving me? She should be jealous of
me, as I was of her. And who is she? Who is Unity?” she asked with an
imperious little stamp. “I 've been lied to about her for many years.
She too lied. Will you explain her? If she's not what that woman said,
what is she?”
“I 'll tell you,” he said.
He spared her nothing. It was not the hour for glossing over unpleasant
things. Let her judge out of the fullness of knowledge. At his tale of
the torturing--he gave her the details--she shrank back, covering her
eyes and uttered a sobbing cry.
“It 's too horrible! I can't bear it; I can't believe it.”
He waited a while to give her time for recovery.
“It's true,” said he.
“I don't believe it,” she cried, facing him again. “The woman warned me
against lies that were being told about her--lies to screen Unity.”
“It 's true,” he repeated. “If you want proofs, I could get you the
newspaper reports of the trial. She was put into prison for three years.
Then John swore that Unity should never suffer again, and, by way of
reparation, adopted her as his own daughter. He came like a god and
lifted her from misery to happiness. That 's why she loves him, as you
say, body and soul.”
“And he loves her.”
Her tone staggered him. “He loves her as a father loves a daughter.”
“And she as a woman loves a lover. I'm no longer a child. I know what I
'm talking about.”
Then he saw how deep the poison had gone. It was a ghastly travesty of
Stellamaris that spoke.
“You are talking wickedness, Stellamaris,” he said sternly. “Go on your
knees and pray to God for forgiveness.”
She threw back her head. “There is n't a God, or He would not allow such
foulness and horror to be on His earth. I believe in nothing. I believe
nobody. I would just as soon believe that woman as you. At least she did
n't pretend to be good. She rejoiced in her vileness. She hid nothing,
as every one else hides things. And now--” her voice dropped to a tone
of great weariness--“don't you think you've tortured me enough?”
The word was a sword through his heart. He stretched out reproachful
hands.
“Stella, dearest, dearest--”
“Forgive me,” she said. “Sometimes I hardly know what I'm saying.”
“If you would only trust me!”
She shook her head sadly.
“I can trust no one, not even you. Let me go now.”
He saw that she was at the end of her strength. Any concession that she
might make now would be for him a Pyrrhic victory. And it was true that
he had tortured her--tortured her, as his whole being asserted, for her
soul's welfare. But he could probe her no further.
They walked in silence toward the house. Constable, as soon as they
had passed, rose and followed them. It is for the greater happiness of
big-hearted dogs that they do not understand all things human.
At the foot of the staircase leading to Stella's wing they parted.
“Stella, darling,” said he, taking her hand, “if you will believe
nothing else, believe this: all our hearts are breaking for you.”
She looked at him for a long, odd moment, with the diamond glitter in
her eyes.
“Mine is broken,” she said.
He stood and watched her wearily mounting the stairs until she
disappeared at the turn of the landing, the old hound scrabbling up
behind her.